For more than a decade, Catholic leaders insisted thatchild sexual abuse by priests was an aberrant horror,expertly quelling any significant protest among AmericanCatholics and containing a debate about the need to reformchurch traditions. Cases of priests' preying on childrencame and went, and though some of them badly embarrassedthe church, none ultimately shook it.

Over the last month, however, that seems to have changed.With each newly revealed example of a priest's crimes, aprelate's complicity and the church's failure to protectits most vulnerable charges, the sexual abuse problem hasmoved from the realm of fleeting scandal to the category ofgenuine crisis. More and more leading Catholics,conservatives as well as liberals, are beginning to speakof it in historic terms, as a potentially pivotalcrossroads for the church in this country.

"I don't know of anything that has affected the wholechurch so much in the United States," said Bishop Thomas J.Gumbleton of Detroit, one of the church's liberal voices.

That assessment drew agreement from William Donohue,president of the Catholic League, a conservative group, whoalso looked back over the church's history in this countryand said, "There is nothing that would rival this."

But it is not at all clear yet what the fallout will be. Agrowing chorus of Catholics is calling for a re-examinationof everything from the celibate, all-male culture of thepriesthood to the limited role of laity in the governanceof parishes and dioceses, and some American bishops andcardinals seem willing to listen.

But on many of these issues, Rome has the final say. Andacross the centuries, it has often responded to unrestamong American Catholics with a refusal to budge, standingits ground and holding fast to traditions and practiceseven as some American Catholics put greater distancebetween themselves and the institutional church or walkedaway.

That is how the Holy See responded to what several Catholichistorians called the first great crisis for the church inthis country, which came just after the Revolutionary War,when lay trustees wanted more control over their parishes.They lost that battle, and the church marched on.

A similar struggle occurred during what many Catholicscholars identified as the last crisis to hit the church inthis country: the furor of many American Catholics overPope Paul VI's 1968 encyclical, "Humanae Vitae," whichrestated the church's condemnation of contraception.

The encyclical ignored the advice that the Vatican hadsolicited from many bishops and theologians, and it ignoredthe reality of many Catholics' lives. Some priests stagedpublic protests and left the priesthood, while manyparishioners simply decided to reject the pope'spronouncement, and others became estranged from the church.

At the very least, child sexual abuse by Catholic priests -and the coverup by Catholic bishops and cardinals - couldeffect a similar breach. One likely outcome is that arising number of American Catholics will separate theirreligious faith from the institution that is supposed tonurture it and, as a result, donate less money to thechurch and spend less time in the pews.

But the current crisis is in many ways more profound thanthe one that the church faced in the late 1960's, whenAmerican Catholics could decide, as a matter of individualconscience, simply to ignore a distant dictum from theVatican.

In this case, many of them are being forced to re-evaluatetheir relationships with the priests in their daily livesand the compassion and intentions of the bishops in theirdiocese.

"This calls into question such a fundamental trust," saidSusan Secker, a moral theologian at Seattle University whowas a member of a Catholic study group in 1993 that maderecommendations to bishops on how to handle child sexualabuse by priests.

"It's not easy to compare it - it's not like you disagreewith teachings or with a position," Ms. Secker said. "Thisis a betrayal of trust, with people trying to understandhow men of God who were helping them with their faith couldbe involved in this. I think it's fundamentallyshattering."

Because of that, the repercussions of the current crisiscould go beyond the quiet and private disaffection ofCatholic parishioners, and many leading Catholics believeit will.

They maintain that the wound to the church is so grave thatit compels a dramatic show of action, possibly including anend to mandatory celibacy for priests, which some expertsbelieve to be one of the aggravating factors in the crisis,and permission for priests to marry.

They cite recent comments by Cardinal Roger M. Mahony ofLos Angeles as evidence that such a movement is gatheringforce. Although Cardinal Mahony is not generally regardedas a progressive prelate, he told reporters: "The EasternCatholic Churches have always had a married priesthood, andI guess it works out fine. So I think it should bediscussed."

The Rev. Richard McBrien, a liberal theologian at theUniversity of Notre Dame, said: "Obligatory celibacy isdead; it's just a matter of time. It's like those oldcomedy movies where someone is dead and they touch the bodyand say, `Joe, how are you?' And all of a sudden the bodyfalls forward."

"That doesn't mean," Father McBrien added, "that thefuneral will be held immediately."

So far, the signals from the Vatican suggest that it neverwill be. The Vatican and its American emissaries weatheredan earlier spasm of intense attention to child sexual abuseby priests in 1992, touched off by the case of a formerMassachusetts priest, James Porter, who molested scores ofchildren. After that journalists moved on to differentsubjects, advocates for change labored in relative silence,and the church went about its usual ways.

There are differences now. In many cities and states, lawenforcement officials are scrutinizing the church moreaggressively than they did then, prompting church leadersin some dioceses to release the names and files of priestsaccused of child sexual abuse. Journalists and lawyers seemmore intent on connecting the dots of the crisis in a waythat leads to the highest levels of the church in theUnited States.

"It's an entirely new era," said A. W. Richard Sipe, aformer Benedictine monk and the author of several books onthe sexual behavior of priests. "The hierarchy has neverbeen challenged this way in the United States before."

Mr. Sipe predicted, based on his regular conversations withreporters and lawyers around the country, that the seriesof disclosures since the beginning of the year has justbegun.

He even alluded to what was arguably Catholicism's greatestcrisis over the last five centuries, the Reformation, whenthere was also a widespread belief in the corruption ofchurch leaders.

That analogy does not quite fit. The Reformation, whichgave birth to Protestantism, also hinged on theologicalquestions, and few experts foresee Americans leaving thechurch in organized droves.

But many suspect that the way the church operates in thiscountry - with bishops and cardinals moving priests fromparish to parish at their unchallenged will - is undersiege. They see an unavoidable need for what David Tracy, aprofessor of theology at the University of Chicago, called"a democratization of the present structure."

"The situation is so grave that only some kinds of seriousmoves, both symbolically and practically, can reallyaddress it," Dr. Tracy said. "This is absolutely shockingand horrendous."

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